"Well," Matthieu paused, as if unwilling to admit the answer, then gave a little self conscious shrug of his shoulders and half a chuckle. "I suppose I may have been neglecting all other things. You know how it is when you get caught up in a new venture! There are menus to approve, and then you have to schmooze all of the right people and the critics to even get them in the place, and then you have to stay on top of the books... it's no excuse I suppose, but now that you bring it up I guess that there has not been much of a non-business side of my life at all for some while."

He looked down at his hands a moment, fiddled with a button on his waistcoat. He was trying to be a better person these days, and perhaps he did not trust himself to be able to manage it in company.

"I know, I know, it happens to all of us. Falling off the map. I may be out from time to time, but it's with the same people it's always been, and that can be very much the same thing", he replied. Eye contact, all of a sudden, had become a difficult feat. "You're a different matter; I've known you for most of my life, but I haven't spent very much time with you, not really, not... one to one".

He put his hands together in his lap, his eyes fixed now on his own shoes.

"I'd guess you may be thinking, 'I like a social call, but what compelled Federick to come over here, rather than Lionel, or Neil, or Salv'".

Matthieu half smiled, but there was warmth in it. 'It is unusual, I will admit,' he replied. 'But I don't want you to think it is by any means unwelcome. Perhaps sometimes we need to shake things up and not do very much the same thing any more.'

He was almost trying to force a positive explanation onto Fed, that both of them could accept - just in case the real reason was something far more terrible, like this just being a business call after all or some kind of bad news.

Matthieu paused, his hand stopping suddenly in what had been a quest for his cigarette case in one of his pockets. He looked back at Fed in surprise, and for a moment the only thing that he could manage to get out of his mouth was air.

'... Sure,' he said after a moment, regaining his composure to fish the silver case out at last and pop it open. 'Why not?'

Matthieu slipped a cigarette into his mouth with a lopsided smile, and offered the case in Fed's direction. "Well, it seems both of us could do with a little bit of interaction, no?" he replied. "Nothing like getting back on the horse. And you and I, we're old friends; we know we'll get along."

The outlook was positive for certain, but he was not going to wax too lyrical just yet. After all, they might find over dinner that friends is all they were, but it was always worth finding out.

"That's right, nothing like getting back into the game", he agreed, and took a cigarette. "A bottle of wine, a meal out, as I haven't had in a month or so-- yes, I think that'll be quite enjoyable, whatever happens".

When the sentence was over, Fed wished he could redact that last addition, 'whatever happens'. The message he had been trying to get across was quite innocent.

Matthieu gave a short laugh at that; whether Fed had meant it that way or not, he took it as a warning about the fact that they may find themselves compatible as friends only. "At least we will avoid all of those horrors that come with a blind date, hmm? The awkward silence, the wondering if you have happened upon an axe murderer..." He lit his cigarette with a gold monogrammed lighter and held the flame out to Fed for him to use.

He tried to avoid the wry smile that was sure to twist his face when he considered that up until painfully recently, it might have been him who was the violent psychopath at the other side of the table. Still, that ordeal was behind him, and all of the mental strain that had come with it had been carefully and painstakingly repaired by his psychologist.

"No, indeed," Matthieu muttered, the close-mouthed words of a man holding his cigarette in his lips as he carefully lights another cigarette. Job done, he leaned back into his chair again and slipped the lighter back into his pocket. "Still, you have it easier; you should try being a Frenchman who doesn't live in Louisiana!"

It was a joke, but there was a little truth to it. Looking for people who did not have xenophobic tendencies was much easier, however, than looking for those who were less than straight.

"Indeed," Matthieu replied, and then paused himself for a moment, before pointing at Fed with his cigarette in a laconic kind of manner. "Though isn't it a little awkward now, hein? To organise the dinner but then actually be still conversing afterwards? I'm sure they don't do it this way in those Hollywood movies. Of course, it's hard to tell without the sound."